Bot policy

The difference between a bot and a robot is that a bot is only software, but a robot is a physical machine.

Our mascot Albin is a cartoon figure of a robot, if that wasn’t clear from his hexagonal body. He is more of a “human” than a robot, just like Donald Duck is more “human” than a duck. To complicate things a little, there is a connection between the cartoon world and the real world. Albin, in his cartoon world, has been given the task of looking after four adopted baby robots. In his world, these are physical robots, but in our world these same robots are actually pure software bots. Oddly enough, Albin is not a software bot in the real world, but only our cartoon mascot.

To sum it up, Albin Apps have

Four software bots (babies and adopted)

One adult cartoon robot (mascot)

Four baby cartoon robots

Totally normal company. So with that background we can go into our bot policy.

There are a lot of bots on the internet, creating an enormous amount of unnecessary, useless and time wasting content on social networks. Some bots are good, but most are, in our opinion, bad. They create fake accounts, fake followers, fake likes, copy pasted garbage and the list of troubles goes on and on.

Therefore we have forbidden all use of bots on Albin, unless they are manually approved in writing and follow this bot policy. As a bot we count all scripts, programs or software to automatically post stuff or interact with Albin. You are not allowed to use the existing API, unless permitted to do so. Only apply for a bot if you have a good reason, we’re not impossible, but there must be a good reason. We see how much garbage is automatically produced and it’s a waste of pixels, bytes and time.

An empty social network with one real post every week is better than a social network full with bots that push out a thousand messages an hour. Because that one time a week when your friend actually posts something, it will not be seen among all the garbage. Eh — but hopefully you have a handful of friends on the network, so that you will see a couple of posts a day. If your really want to see bot generated content, there are plenty of other networks where that is almost mandatory.

An approved bot:

Must be deployed by a verified person, organization or company

Must fulfill a useful function that benefits the bot owner, Albin Apps and the users of this social network.

Must be clearly marked in the username as being a bot. @examplename-bot@albin.social

Examples of forbidden bots:

Copies your Twitter posts to Albin, to increase your outreach. However if you’re a European celebrity or politician we’re starting to think approved. Because it’s managed accounts anyway and have some kind of public interest. What we don’t need is the anonymous guy in Sri-Lanka, Denmark or wherever with a Twitter full of bot generated posts that is bot copied into Albin, and things like that.

Follow as many users as possible.

Copies news from an RSS feed to Albin. However, if a real news company would like to use a bot to copy real news to it’s followers, we’re starting to talk approved bot.

Copies a funny joke every day from your database of funny jokes.

Copies a good quote every 30 minutes from your database of quotes.

Copies a public domain photo once ever hour or even worse, violates copyright.